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[Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#435214: Bug#435214: Clarification of licensing terms of semidef-oct

rafael,
i am happy to switch the license to GNU, but of course we have to check with lieven. as a coincidence i will see lieven tomorrow, when we can send the final confirmation.
however, it should be noted that semideg_prog is really quite old, and there are now far more recent solvers available for semidefinite programming. i have not used semidef_prog for many years now. i don't know which solver is best for linking to octave.
i (and many others too) do most of my day to day convex optimization work using cvx, which has a GNU license, but unfortunately, runs on top of matlab. our plan (hope? goal?) however is to develop a full GNU system for modeling and solving convex optimization problems. lieven's CVXOPT is a good start along these lines, but i am not sure how easy or hard it is to tie python/C into octave. if you are interested in optimization software for octave, i'd be happy to chat; maybe we can help (beyond changing the license on ancient, but working, software to GNU). 

stephen


Rafael Laboissiere wrote:

I am one of the members of the Debian Octave Group [1], which maintains the
Octave-related packages for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution.  Your
semidef_prog software, which was ported to Octave by A. S. Hodel, has been
packaged for Debian [2] since 1998.

Only recently, it has been brought to our attention [3] the fact that the
license terms in the semidef_prog's README file are incompatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines [4]. At least, the phrase "distribute this 
software for any purpose without fee" is ambiguous.

Unless the license terms are clarified or they are switched to some standard
license language (like MIT/X11 or GPL), we will be forced to removed the
package from Debian, which would be a pity for our users.

Just FYI, the semidef_prog software seem sto work correctly with the latest
version of Octave (2.9.13).

[1] http://pkg-octave.alioth.debian.org/
[2] http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/octave-sp
[3] http://bugs.debian.org/435214
[4] http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines

(Please, respect the Reply-To header, in order to keep the discussion
recorded in our Bug Tracking System.  Thanks.)

Best regards,
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